https://leader.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=2288232Audiology in Brief A company based in Botswana, Africa, wants to offer its low-cost hearing aids to children for free. The Solar Aid system, made by Godisa Technologies, combines a small hearing aid and a lightweight solar charger. Godisa developed a No. 13 rechargeable button battery for the system. The company makes ...2006-04-01T00:00:00News in Brief

A company based in Botswana, Africa, wants to offer its low-cost hearing aids to children for free. The Solar Aid system, made by Godisa Technologies, combines a small hearing aid and a lightweight solar charger. Godisa developed a No. 13 rechargeable button battery for the system. The company makes hearing aids specifically for the sub-Saharan Africa environment. The systems are low-cost and built to last at least two to three years. However, Godisa is seeking donations to be able to offer the hearing aids to African children for free. Visit http://www.godisa.org for more information. An article describing this system will appear soon in The ASHA Leader.

Humming Fish Self-Regulates Its Hearing

A humming fish has evolved a way to avoid deafening itself with its own noise, researchers have found. They say the same mechanism could be at work in other animals, including humans, helping to tone down the senses and avoid overpowering them with self-generated signals.

Andrew Bass, a neuroscientist, looked at the male plainfin midshipman fish (Porichthys notatus) that live off the west coast of the United States from California to Alaska. During summer nights, they hum to attract females and encourage them to lay their eggs. The hum, described by some as similar to the chanting of monks, is so loud that houseboat owners near San Francisco have sometimes complained of their homes vibrating at night.

Bass and his fellow authors have shown that the brains of these fish regulate their hearing so that they are not deafened and can hear predators or incoming females even while humming. The results appear in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Walter Reed Funded to Study Hearing Loss Distortion

Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) has received a $1.8 million grant from the Oticon Foundation to fund a project designed to better understand the distortions caused by sensorineural hearing loss. The goal will be to create signal processing to counteract these distortions.

The WRAMC research team will focus on the unaided suprathreshold measure of auditory function. Research has shown that the more normal a listener’s suprathreshold auditory function, the greater the success a patient is likely to achieve with hearing instruments. To date, attempts to compensate for suprathreshold distortions have resulted in some success, seen especially in the development of directional microphones.